Last week, as part of the advanced training course “Foreign Regional Studies. The American continent in the regional dimension” the students and teachers of Samara University were addressed by Marina Andreyevna Chernykh, candidate of political sciences, junior researcher of the Department of Domestic Political Studies of the G.A. Arbatov Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Marina Chernykh. The topic of the lecture was the U.S. immigration system, the illegal migration crisis and the domestic political situation in the U.S. on the eve of the 2024 presidential election.

The historical context of the topic was touched upon. The lecturer mentioned that from the very beginning the USA was formed as a country of immigrants who needed to find a common language. Pennsylvania succeeded in this. It became the most attractive colony for immigrants and the first melting pot of the American nation thanks to its liberal migration policy.

The lecture also touched on such challenging topics as colonialism, mass emigration, and slavery. The problems arising from them were highlighted, as well as the thorny path to solve them and minimize the negative effects. Laws were passed to regulate and restrict immigration, including of specific ethnicities. The World Wars and the Great Depression also played a huge role for the US in terms of migration.

Nowadays a huge problem for the U.S. is illegal migration, which “…has reached a scale never seen before,” emphasizing internal security concerns. The racial-ethnic composition of the population is also changing.

The expert moved on to an overview of Canada. Speaking about the immigration system, she mentioned that the country remained Eurocentric until the end of World War II. The country, just like the US, had laws restricting immigration. But it later became the first country to pass a multiculturalism law. In 1967, Canada introduced a points-based rating system for immigrants, which is still in place today, not only at the federal level (this program is called Express Entry), but also at the provincial and territorial levels.

Marina Andreevna concluded her lecture by highlighting the internal political situation in the United States on the eve of the 2024 presidential election. She noted that the difficult situation in the country has long existed. In recent years, the division has been rapidly deepening, inflation is at a high level under the Biden administration, and crime is also high in big cities. At the end of the lecture, the students were able to ask all the questions they were interested in.

Photo: Alina Katavaskina | V.A. Kakovkin Illuminator Photography Club